V2.2: Direct urls, more matching improvements and bug fixes

For Version 2.2 I've updated the application so that each search displays the search terms in the querystring so that you can have links directly to beers, for example:

http://www.beernumbeer.com/Default.aspx?beer=swish

I actually always had this functionality (to make sure to get indexed by search engines), but just reworked the app a bit so it's standard.

I also looked through the data that was coming in and made some improvements to the matching, specifically in cases where brewery names were throwing off results.

And I also fixed a bug where the Untappd scores were displaying incorrectly under heavy load (due to a misplaced static variable declaration).

Next up:  Mobile apps!

V2.1: Improved Matching

This release consisted of putting some thought about the best way to check if the beers I'm getting back from the various sites are the same, even with the different name variations.  For example, for CBS, you see the get the following names back:

Beer Advocate:	Founders CBS Imperial Stout
Untappd:	Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS)
RateBeer:	Founders Backstage Series # 2: CBS (Canadian Breakfast Stout)
BreweryDB:	Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS)

So I added some logic around checking the brewery and the name and playing with the weighting of the name until I got suitable results for all of my test cases.

V2: Mobile Friendly

I posted to the /CraftBeer subreddit, and got some great feedback.  I also could see how users were using the site, and immediately it showed that the majority (51%) used a mobile device.  Which makes sense.  So next step was to make the site more mobile friendly, so I've added detection that sends mobile devices to a mobile page.  This page is slimmed downed and tabbed, and at 320px should fit most screens.

I also took the advice of showing the Untappd score out of 100, so that all the ratings are the same scale.

V1: Initial Release

The layout is pretty straightforward:  search for a beer, autocomplete kicks in from a custom web service (built on top of BreweryDB data), and then I gather the ratings from Beer Advocate, Untappd, and RateBeer.  I average up the three scores (multiplying Untappd by 20), and display the average.  I then added the Beer Details (from BreweryDB), as well as the Did You Mean suggestions (also from my BreweryDB).

Why build beernumbeer?

I like beer.  More so, I like good beer.  So when browsing the vast selection of beers at the liquor store, I'd always google beers, scroll to find the first Beer Advocate (or something similar) rating, and click to find the rating.  But I was always bothered that there wasn't one stop to go to find the ratings from all the big sites, Beer Advocate, Untappd, RateBeer, etc.  A site that was like google, but was suited for beer, that would naturally autocomplete for the arcane beers I was looking for.

That's where this site started from.  As a software developer, beernumbeer.com grew from my passions of beer and programming.  I hope to continually improve it, and my hopes are that this blog will help solicit feedback, share ideas, announce updated features, discuss technology, with the goal of making the site more useful to all of us.